211–220 of 653 posts
At the beginning of my career when I was out to prove myself, I took my job so seriously that my sense of personal self-worth was intricately tied up with the quality of my work. After a particularly disappointing experience that knocked me off my horse for a while, I concluded that putting some distance between my career and the subjective experience of my place in the world was essential to my mental health. I try…
Sure, there's always going to be assholes and people that are just straight up mean for the sake of being mean, but in my experience those types of people don't last long anywhere because nobody wants to put up with their shit.
Can you look 2-3 years back at your original code and not find any problems? Then that's a problem :P We all learn, evolve, and improve, so at the end of the day, any feedback is better than no feedback.
Stop judging others so harshly it’s probably the #1 way. Whatever measure you use is going to be used on you. Step #2 is probably to listen fully to the end before ever speaking. This is hard, and took me a long time to get right. Just let them speak. When receiving feedback, start by saying internally, or even verbally, I realize that I’ve made a mistake, and I’m thankful you have my best interests in mind and feel…
No, feedback is someone else's opinion - don't assume that it's absolutely correct, listen to it and weigh it up and then decide if you agree with any of it.
You have to be able to accept feedback without taking it personally, but you should always be objective about it.
It's something I'm still working on and as others have said, having worth outside of your career or outside of others is a big portion of my ability to work through the emotions. But while I'm still learning that, I really have found power and stability from letting that emotion pass before responding
Depends on environment you work in. I had a great chance to work with people who showed me how it’s done properly and told what can I do better and I did. That was awesome constructive place. At the moment I am in very toxic place, looking for a new job. And I don’t feel anything constructive. It’s really personal. The colleagues try to use every weakness and my every error to take advantage of. Hopefully soon I will…
An old colleague shared a quote: "dysfunctional behaviors are functional in dysfunctional environments".
I've had to change up my style when I've moved to better (less political/dysfunctional) teams. I've also worked with some that never changed their mindset after being on a bad team: they then propagate that same broken behavior at their new workplace.
Best of luck in finding something better, it's out there.
What you have encountered is actually one of the necessary steps to really become "a senior developer". And congratulations, you have already passed the biggest part of that hurdle: becoming aware of the issue. There are things that are fragile, things that break when they encounter a shock. Such as porcelain, when transported. There are things that are non-fragile, things that do not break when they encounter a simi…
Also people who criticize people make a mistake kind of.
Always criticize the code, not the person.
I have made (and continue to make) many mistakes. Some, are used as leverage by others, to attack me. Most, I find them, myself, and feel like a jackass, but the problem gets fixed (sometimes, in both cases, but always, in the second case), and the lesson gets learned (in both cases).
I'm generally my own harshest critic. I expect a lot from myself, and don't cut myself much slack.
I've come to learn that having a critical and unvarnished self-awareness, takes the teeth out of whatever anyone else thinks of me.
Call it a "fearless and searching self-inventory." I know myself, quite well. There's a bunch of stuff that I'm really good at -way above average-, but there's ten times as much stuff I'm not good at -some, embarrassingly bad. I need to have a clear and unbiased awareness of this.
I don't hide what I'm good at -and that often ends up with people calling me "arrogant," but I also don't claim expertise in stuff I'm not good at, I welcome valid criticism, and self-correct, when necessary.
I now believe and do stuff that, once upon a time, I scoffed at.
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
When it comes to criticism of my work, it's often context-sensitive. For example, thread-studly code can look quite primitive, because we aren't doing fancy stuff in a long line, but doing simple stuff in small chunks, and being careful where we get it, and where we put it, or we don't DRY, because we don't want to break cache or pipelines. We may also write code that is designed to be maintained by less-skilled engineers, so claims of "overengineering" may have merit, whereas, if we are writing code that we, or a skilled engineer, will maintain, then getting fancy is fine.
Much criticism actually comes from personal insecurity. We may feel bad, but the person delivering the criticism may feel worse. If I'm on a team with them, then it might be a good idea for me to be empathetic, polite and forgiving, as opposed to telling them to go piss up a rope, or sawing on my wrist with a butterknife over it. Maybe simply explaining why we are doing things the way we are, could actually teach them, or reacting politely, when they are deliberately trying to goad us, may help teach them to be better team members.
The lessons aren't always technical, and they can go both ways.
Also, I am often wrong, and become right, by admitting that -even if it is humbling and embarrassing. Just because someone else is delivering their criticism like a jerk, doesn't mean they are wrong.
In art school, we spent a lot of time learning how to give and receive critiques, because the fastest way to improve was to try frequently and critique often. You learn very early to divorce your ego and sense of self from your artworks and embrace every attempt as an opportunity to improve towards an ideal you can never reach. You also learn how to give meaningful criticism without being an asshole. Writing code is…
It still catches me off guard when I feel someone clenching up while we talk about ways to improve something.
I sometimes take those people through a tour of my own changes and talk through all the ways those could also be improved.
Accept that you might be wrong. Welcome anything that can help you toward the task being done right and be thankful.
Of course, if you can avoid being wrong, do. Because you can't always afford being wrong. (in some professions, it's a life or death sentence for someone)